The Golden Day (10 page)

THIRTEEN
Schoolgirl and Man

I
T WAS NOT A VOICE IN THE END
, but a face. The face was on the front page of the afternoon newspaper, piles and piles and piles of them, in the kiosk at the bus stop. Cubby saw it there as she stood waiting to buy sherbet-filled lollies after school. A small, smudgy face. When she saw it, she felt as though an icicle was slipping under her ribs. The headline read:

TEACHER MISSING

And the face underneath it was Morgan’s.

Cubby read the black words on the page. Morgan was a bad person. The newspaper knew everything about him, how bad he was. Morgan had been in prison. Morgan had done terrible things. Morgan was not his real name, the newspaper said. He had another name when he did the bad things. He had done those things and he had been sent to prison. He had been in prison for a long time.

‘What was she doing with that fellow?’ said Cubby’s mother. ‘And all of you little girls? It’s unbelievable.’

It was unbelievable. They couldn’t believe it.

‘You could all have been killed!’ said Cubby’s mother.

But we weren’t, thought Cubby. We’re all here, and Miss Renshaw isn’t.

A third small white note came home.

Dear parents,

With regard to the absence of Miss Renshaw from school, you may have seen references to this matter in the press recently. I am sure that you agree that it is best that both girls and parents refrain from speaking to any members of the press, in the unlikely event that anyone should be approached.

Yours sincerely,

(Miss) Emily Baskerville
Headmistress

‘What’s the press?’ asked Martine.

‘The press means newspaper and television and radio journalists,’ explained Miss Summers, pushing her fingers against her forehead.

‘What’s a journalist?’ asked the shortest Elizabeth.

‘It’s someone who writes the news,’ said Miss Summers.

‘A journalist goes out and discovers what’s happened, then writes it down for the newspaper to print.’

‘Like Clark Kent,’ said Martine.

‘Not like Clark Kent,’ said Miss Summers sharply. ‘Clark Kent is not a real person. A journalist is a real person. You girls are not to speak to anyone like that. Nobody with cameras, microphones or notebooks. You are not to speak to anyone like that.’

‘That’s a bit rude, though, isn’t it?’ Georgina objected.

‘I mean, if an adult asks us something, isn’t it polite to answer?’

‘You are not to speak to anyone like that,’ repeated Miss Summers. ‘Miss Baskerville has forbidden it.’

When they were alone, the little girls huddled together in horror.

‘Miss Renshaw said he was a poet,’ said Elizabeth with the plaits. ‘She never said he had been in prison.’

‘Do you think she knew?’

Of course she knew, that’s why she liked him. Miss Renshaw loved prisoners. After all, it was in the Bible:

I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came
unto me.

‘But he wasn’t in prison any more,’ Georgina objected. ‘It says in the paper he was let out of prison. You’re only supposed to visit prisoners when they’re locked up.’

‘How can you be out of prison if you’ve done something like that?’ said Cynthia. ‘He kidnapped someone.’

And worse.

‘I don’t think she knew,’ said Bethany, who had stopped crying, for a while at least. ‘She’d be too scared. What if he did it again?’

We won’t mention these little meetings with Morgan to our parents
or other staff, will we, girls? We won’t mention Morgan.Will we?

‘He’s a bad person,’ said Martine.

Then the news came that the police had found something in the cave. Something important. The little girls knew because the police told Mr Dern and Mr Dern told Bethany.

‘Mr Dern said he’d tell me as soon as he knows anything more,’ said Bethany, as they crowded around her.

What could the police have found?

‘Footprints,’ said Georgina.

‘Maybe bones,’ said Martine.

They shuddered.

‘Whose bones?’ said Icara. ‘It takes ages to turn into bones. Months and months.’

But it wasn’t bones. Mr Dern told Bethany and Bethany told them. It was the necklace, the tear-shaped amber bead that hung around Miss Renshaw’s neck. The police found it lying on the floor of the cave. The leather string was broken, snapped in two. The police picked everything up in gloved hands. They sealed the pieces in a plastic bag and put it on a shelf marked ‘Evidence’.

‘Mr Dern said they’re checking it for fingerprints,’ said Bethany.

Fingerprints…

‘She probably just dropped it on the ground and forgot about it,’ said Georgina. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

Icara had been sitting by herself at the back of the classroom. Icara, remote, isolated, distant, far-flung. But now she got up and, with her hands in her blazer pockets, she sauntered down the aisle to where Bethany was slumped forward on her desk, surrounded by the other girls. Bethany looked up apprehensively.

‘You’ve got to face facts,’ said Icara.

Icara is a realist, but the world needs dreamers.

‘What do you mean?’ said Bethany.

‘The truth is,’ said Icara, ‘the police think Miss Renshaw is dead.’

The room held its breath, scandalised. Then out tumbled a medley of outrage.

Don’t be mean! That’s horrible. Miss Renshaw is not dead! Don’t say that! How can you say that? You don’t know! Don’t listen to her. It’s not true!

The voices came from everywhere. Icara stood with her feet apart, steady on the ground.

‘It’s been too long,’ she said. ‘If she was alive, we’d know by now.’

‘Not if she was hiding on purpose,’ said Martine.

Icara looked at her scornfully. ‘Why would she do that?’

‘People do hide in caves,’ retorted Martine, ‘for your information,’ as though this sort of thing happened all the time on the Isle of Pines.

‘Why didn’t they find her, then?’ said Icara. ‘Why did they only find the necklace?’

For a moment they all saw it, the delicate, nearly invisible remains of the winged insect trapped in amber, millions of years ago.

‘What do you think happened, then?’ asked Cubby.

Icara turned and looked straight at her.

‘I think Morgan murdered her,’ she said. ‘Down in that cave. That’s why they want the fingerprints.’

Sickness spread from one child to another.

‘But he loved her,’ said Georgina. ‘I saw them kissing.’

The kiss. A kiss means love. Morgan loved Miss Renshaw. Down in the cave with the Aboriginal paintings, under the grand Moreton Bay fig, at the water’s edge, in front of the wild Pacific Ocean, he kissed Miss Renshaw and he loved her.

‘But he was a poet,’ said the tall Elizabeth. ‘He wrote poems.’

‘And he was a gardener,’ put in another Elizabeth. ‘He loved living things…’ She trailed off.

‘He probably learned all that in prison,’ replied Icara, shrugging. ‘That’s what you do in prison. You learn things so that you can get a job when they let you out.’

‘But he was against killing,’ said Cynthia. ‘That’s why he wouldn’t go to the war, remember?’

She stopped, troubled. From what they had read in the newspapers, it seemed unlikely that Morgan would have been made to go in the army at all. He’d been in prison, until just a little while ago. They wouldn’t put someone like that in the army, would they?

Cubby tried to remember Morgan’s face, but all she could bring to mind were his gentle fingers covered with earth, and the sound of his voice, singing like rocking waves.

‘But why?’ she said. ‘Why would he do that?’

‘People just do,’ said Icara. ‘Some people just murder people,’ said Icara, the realist. ‘They don’t need a reason, they just do it.’

Dead, dead. Could Miss Renshaw be dead? Swallowed up, disappeared, dead?

‘You’re wrong, you’re so wrong,’ said Bethany, clenching her little white hands into fists. ‘Miss Renshaw is not dead. She’s coming back. I know she is.’

Cubby stared up at the blackboard. Words are never really wiped away, she realised. They’re always there, under all the layers of chalk dust. Thousands and thousands of words had been written on this board, hundreds of thousands.

Not now. Not ever.

‘I know she’s coming back,’ said Bethany.

All the words Miss Renshaw had ever written might have been wiped meticulously away by Miss Summers, but they were still there, Cubby knew it, in chalky, invisible layer upon layer underneath. Every word.

They weren’t just written; she could hear them. She could hear the words, right in her ear. Someone was there, in the room with her, speaking right in her ear, and her nose and mouth were filled with the strong, sweet smell of Morgan’s cigarettes.

FOURTEEN
Ebb and Flow

T
HE LITTLE GIRLS TURNED AWAY
from Icara. They couldn’t help it. It was too much. But Cubby found she couldn’t turn away, not entirely.

When the bell rang for the end of school, the others left with their arms around each other, whispering. Then the room was empty, except for the two of them, each at their own desk, putting their things away. Cubby closed her bag slowly, clicking the buckles shut one at a time. She could feel Icara looking at her, and those unseen eyes seemed to be asking something, almost begging. Help me, the eyes said. Please. But that made no sense. Icara didn’t need any help. She never cried. She was the strongest of them all.

Cubby looked up. Icara was standing next to her desk.

‘Can you come over to my house again, this afternoon?’ said Icara. ‘There’s something I want to show you.’

‘All right,’ said Cubby.

And so she found herself for the second time leaving the school with Icara, heading past the uniform inspection at the yellow gate, down the hill and onto the bus, then on again through the winding streets to the last leafy stop. Icara pulled the cord and they dragged their schoolbags down the bus steps.

The afternoon air was warm, and full of invisible birds. They ambled through the tunnel of trees along the road. This time there was a sleek green car parked outside Icara’s house and the gate was swinging open. Icara took out her key and in they went through the front door, letting their bags drop on the floor.

‘Don’t take off your shoes this time,’ said Icara quickly. ‘I want to show you something outside.’

There was no sign of Mrs Ellerman, just a bottle of orange juice open on the kitchen bench. The two girls headed out the glass door into the back yard.

‘It’s down at the river,’ said Icara.

At the river? They could see the river from where they stood, but between the yard and the water there was a stretch of wild bush.

‘There’s a hidden path,’ said Icara, answering Cubby’s unspoken question.

They walked to the edge of the bush, and Icara held up a knotted branch. Behind it was the beginning of a pathway, covered in mud and leaves. They made their way down cautiously, as it was steep, so steep in some places that they had to half-slide. Stinging branches flicked back in their faces. It wasn’t far – Cubby could smell the closeness of the mangroves. Another branch smacked her in the ear and suddenly the path ended and the river stretched out before them, shining and black as the night sky.

‘Over there,’ said Icara. ‘That’s what I wanted to show you.’

She was pointing to a metal pole, just along the riverbank. Tied to the pole, to stop it from floating away, was a little blue wooden rowboat.

‘It belongs to the people next door,’ said Icara. She gestured with her elbow at the tiled roof of a neighbouring house just discernible through the dense forest of eucalypts. ‘But we can borrow it.’

A boat!

‘We could row down the river for a bit,’ said Icara. ‘I’ve done it before. We could explore.’

On the other side of the river, as far as Cubby could see, there were no houses, only bush and mud. It looked like a place where people had never been.

The tide surged backward and forward, mild but relentless.

‘Let’s go,’ said Cubby, excited.

They took off their shoes, tucked their socks inside them, and laid them on a high rock away from the water. Then they stepped out into the shallows towards the boat. It bobbed away from them each time they got close, like a shy pony. Eventually Icara managed to hold it steady and they scrambled in. It smelled of grass and fish.

‘I’ll do the rowing,’ said Icara, moving herself onto the bench in the middle. ‘You sit at the back.’

She lifted off the rope to release the boat from the metal pole. Then she picked up the two wooden oars, fitting them into the rowlocks, and dipped them into the river with a slicing splash and began to row.

Cubby sat on the back bench, on a wet plastic cushion. She let her fingers hang over the side, touching the surface of the icy water with her fingertips. The oars swished and gulped. The little boat twisted through the reeds until it eased out into freedom, as Icara rowed on.

The river began to narrow. The banks on both sides were overgrown with bush and trees, peeling paperbarks and low, creeping mangroves.